How To De-Carb Your Coconut Milk

How To De-Carb Your Coconut Milk

Coconut milk has lots of good fat in it, but it also has a somewhat frustrating amount of carbohydrates: 8 (!) grams net carbs per cup, 13 total minus 5 grams of fiber. Especially if you are doing a non-dairy version of keto, relying on coconut milk will quickly eat up your budget for carbs.

If you chill a can of coconut milk in the fridge and then open it, you will see the coconut fat separate from the liquid portion. If you taste this liquid, you will see that it is sweet- this is where almost all the carbohydrates hide in coconut milk. We are going to replace this liquid with a much lower-carb alternative: almond milk. Unsweetened vanilla almond milk generally has about one carb per cup.

Instructions:

Chill a can of coconut milk in the fridge overnight, or at least a few hours. You may want to do several cans at once.

Carefully open the can. You should see a solid white mass of coconut fat. Scoop this out with a spoon and reserve. Give it a quick rinse in cold water to remove any sweet liquid clinging to the fat.

Set out two clear glasses on your counter. Pour the coconut liquid from the can to the glass. Then pour a matching amount of unsweetened vanilla almond milk into the second glass.

Combine the coconut fat and the almond milk in a microwave-safe bowl (or small saucepan) and heat until coconut fat is dissolved. Whisk to combine smoothly.

Store in a mason jar or airtight container and use within three days.

You now have all the fatty goodness of coconut milk, with the same thickness and volume, but with a significantly lowered carb count. Since the coconut fat varies slightly with each can, the amount of almond milk in each batch will vary as well. Although I believe this to be no more than 1-2 carbs, in order to be conservative I will count one cup of this coconut milk as 3 grams of net carbohydrate. By comparison, one cup of heavy cream has 6.6 grams of net carbs. I have not sent this to a lab for analysis, although it’s on my Mad Scientist wish list.

The liquid portion of coconut milk is also where a lot of the coconut flavor is, which means that this keto-fied substance has less of a distinctive coconut taste. If you are using a recipe where you really want the coconut flavor to come through, you can actually blend in a drop or two of coconut flavoring or extract, and a couple of drops of liquid stevia glycerite (a non-bitter version of Stevia).